


Home Again, Home Again

by gondalsqueen



Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Character Study, Family Dynamics, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, Non-Graphic Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-22
Updated: 2015-05-22
Packaged: 2018-03-31 16:44:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3985402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gondalsqueen/pseuds/gondalsqueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ten things you probably didn't know about Hera. Designed as a character study, but some plot manages to sneak in, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Home Again, Home Again

**Author's Note:**

> I love Hera, because she's not broken. I might have said this somewhere else, already. She can't have had an easy life, but she's not fighting the Empire reflexively, and she's not an open wound, like all of the guys on the ship are. She's less buried in her own b.s. than anyone else on the Ghost, and more on the lookout for how to help people. 
> 
> But she's not perfect. She verges on the brink of fanatical from time to time, and she's way too secretive. I think Sabine was totally in the right during Out of Darkness. 
> 
> And also I'm playing with this little theory that she and Kanan are in a relationship that's not exactly meant to be a secret, it just awkwardly ends up that way because they're both uncomfortable with public displays of any sort of sexuality. 
> 
> And mostly, I was trying to write the next chapter of my other fic, without knowing her back story, and that was leading to some impressively bad writing. So I had to stop and figure out where she's coming from. Here ya go! Just one girl's opinion, obviously. 
> 
> Oh, and lots of references. The poem is "The Second Coming," by William Butler Yeats. The songs are "Gather Us In," "The Times They Are A'Changing," "Climb Every Mountain" from The Sound of Music, "Aging Well," "Blessings," "How Can I Keep From Singing?" and "Refugee."

1)      Her childhood was idyllic.

Most people hear “Ryloth” and think her earliest memories are nightmares. Nothing could be further from the truth. Her father, her aunts, and her uncles loved her with the fierce affection of a people who might die tomorrow and choose to live free today. She lived steps away from a pack of friends and cousins. The communal kitchens were easy to pilfer (especially while they were too young to understand “food shortage”), and she had freedom to do whatever she liked in an endless and very exciting landscape.

She was given real speeders—broken ones, but real all the same—for toys. (She also had a toolbox, so broken speeders were almost better than new.) Her gymnasium was a rock garden with a few tall trees and a deep pool of water. The children would scatter from the tunnels at first light and spend the day here, daring each other to climb and jump, staying underwater for as long as possible, then coming up to throw mud from the pond’s floor at their companions’ heads. If you could find an animal, you could try to tame it. You more often got a nasty bite than a domesticated pet, but the attempts were still fun. The older children were trusted with training weapons in case of danger, and target practice, though questionable, was another fun pastime.

Nobody in the camp had time to watch after her, unless she specifically called their attention. So she did whatever she pleased.

And at night, back in the tunnels with her family, she watched the dancing in the firelight until she fell asleep under a table and the drums continued in her dreams.

Such a childhood was marked by real tragedy. Regularly, an aunt or uncle didn’t return with the group. She learned the funeral service by heart. Once, a child was bitten by a coral savaak, and slowly wasted away with fever and poison. That was the most frightening. Some of her friends grew hard, refusing to care about anyone, since anyone could be taken away in a moment. Not Hera. She grieved quickly and fiercely, and then tucked them away in her heart and mourned them in her prayers at night. This ritual gave her the sense that she was protecting the ones they’d lost. Always, her own father was invincible, too strong and too smart to worry about. 

 

2)      She hates waste.

And really, her packrat tendencies are just one shade shy of pathological. She burns the popcorn and insists on eating the burned pieces, even though _there’s plenty of popcorn, we can make more, just throw it **away** , Hera._ She is _saving_ that last bite of Coruscanti yogurt. Wrap it up and put it in the refrigeration unit. She can use it to cook something, since they’re out of oil. (Her thriftiness is one of the reasons for her terrible cooking.)   Unlike Kanan’s Jedi-ascetic bunk, her own quarters are full of old pieces of droids, and burned out power cells, and even paper books and old, torn clothing. (“I like to read it on paper. You can’t even find that one on datapad. And I’ll get around to ripping out the seams and making something new with that shirt, some day.”)

She keeps these things neatly sorted and packed away as much as possible, but there is an upper limit to the storage space available on the Ghost. When the junk spreads to the bed itself and Kanan cleans her room one day, she has a mild panic attack--“Now I can’t _find_ anything!”  

In her childhood home, a wasted bite was a starving child. People who threw things away were spoiled, and lacked the inner resources to find a more creative way to use them. Old habits die hard.

 

3)      Her father’s pride in her remains the single most destructive force in her life.

A memory that isn’t really hers, because she wasn't paying attention: Cham showing the Republic troops around his base. “Don’t you want to pull that little girl off the speeder before she gets it moving?” a clone asks.

Her father smiles indulgently. “That is Hera. She can handle it.”

He believes that children need to learn by doing, by being given responsibility over their own lives. Extreme responsibility. The mothers complain that these children are just too _small_ to be unsupervised, and did you know that they crossed into the brightlands yesterday, and before that, Hem was dragged by a rycrit and shattered his arm? Cham tells them that of course, all children are different. Perhaps theirs are not yet responsible enough to protect themselves. As for his Hera, she is strong and smart, and if she wants to poke a rycrit with a stick, let her. She’ll learn that it’s a bad idea, or she’ll build a better stick.  

Eventually, she gets older, and she _does_ develop the good judgment he credits her with. Some crazy, dangerous stunts are worth trying. Others will get you very badly hurt, and that’s unpleasant. She looks out for the younger ones, who worship her—The general’s daughter! They say she can fly frigates, the real ships, the big ones! She never bullies them into safety—children need to learn by doing—but she is not quite a grown-up yet, and they listen to her advice.

But despite her father’s pride and her own practicality, she grows up very lonely. Childhood nightmares laughed off: “You are not afraid of zillo monsters. You just don’t want to go to bed, little one.” Injuries, illnesses ignored. Once she broke her foot and told nobody, truly believing that she could walk it off. That foot hurt for years in damp weather, but the pain eventually subsided, so she figures her father was right about her. She can take care of herself. It still never occurs to her to go to bed when she has a bad cold.

And then come the missions. “Are you really going to send an eight-year-old to place the beacons, sir?”

“It’s an innocuous location. No droid will stop her. And nobody bigger will fit through that hole.”  (He calls her his skin-and-bones girl, but she looks no different than any other child on Ryloth.)

“Don’t worry about Hera. She doesn’t know the meaning of fear.”

Hera knew what it was to be terrified. But she also learned to take deep breaths and keep moving, and she never disappointed her father by telling him she was afraid.

 

4)      She weighs, depending upon the availability of snacks, between 138 and 145 pounds.

She has tried to gain muscle mass, to no avail. And when she can’t take care of herself, because reality and the laws of physics won’t bend for her, it feels like a failure on her part and a personal affront on the part of the galaxy.

She’s careful around bars—always has been—and hates herself for what she sees as cowardice. If she is honest, it’s only good judgment. So many underground contacts take place in seedy, off the radar locations like these. It’s a rare occasion indeed when she exits a bar without feeling like she’s dodged some close-call bad situation. When she has to attend this kind of meeting now, Zeb goes with her. (Kanan is too defensive, and having Zeb stand behind her shoulder and grin at people feels fantastic.)

One time—just one—she didn’t dodge fast enough. The underground desperately needed the medical supplies she was sent to acquire, so she ignored the warning signals until after the cargo was secured. And then, when she actually made for the door, she had to brush past that unsavory group with no margin for escape, and one lek was caught hard enough to spin her around, and she thought in the moment of that spin “Oh, kriff. This is it.” That time, she’s too slow with her blaster to take out four men. (And, as Kanan now reminds her every time they spar, lekku are a serious disadvantage.) They don’t bother to take her anywhere private, and the rest of the dive doesn’t care, or else greatly enjoys the show. When they finally let her go, she tells herself how lucky she is to have escaped serious, permanent injury. She tells herself to get up and MOVE, Hera, don’t just lie there like an idiot, waiting for help that won’t come…

When she gets back to camp, she steals a course of emergency contraception and a handful of antibiotics from the infirmary, throws them all up, and is paralyzed with fear for a month. Nobody finds out.

She avoids thinking of that time for so long that she now genuinely can’t remember the details. (But her body can, seizing up at just the wrong touch, defensive when tapped from behind, a preternatural awareness of space on all sides. Maybe that helps with defensive flying?) When she does consider it, she feels a shame so intense that it sends her to the fresher in a new wave of vomiting. Not a shame of her body—she is too pragmatic to feel defiled or unclean—but a shame at her own sense of failure. They hurt her in order to humiliate her. And she’s not hurt anymore, but for years she felt humiliated. Bad enough the rape.  Worse by far that anyone should know about it, should look at her with pity and feel uncomfortable around her.

And she feels grateful, so grateful to have gotten away with only this one incident. Never a slave. Never a participant in her own humiliation. Spitting and biting the whole time. Still free. Eventually, she talks with Kanan about it, what she remembers, because he can surely tell anyway. (“No, I had no idea!” he protests.) Then a dam breaks over the memory, and she wants to tell everyone who’s ever been hurt. It’s okay, she wants to say. Some day, you’re going to be okay.

Mostly, she says, she feels lucky. Kanan squeezes her arm and says nothing then, but suggests several times over the years that her gratitude is, perhaps, a dysfunctional coping mechanism. “Sometimes we get hurt, Hera. Sometimes it’s okay to be hurt.” She asks if he prefers to be the pot or the kettle.

 

5)      She never grieves for any person the way she grieves for the tunnels beneath the Cazne plains.

Ryloth’s cities were constantly bombed. Living beneath the ground, in the wilderness, she had a false sense of safety. The constant smell of cooking spices. The comforting buzz of conversation. And, of course, the music. All beneath blast doors that could protect them from anything _. If you hear blaster fire, or feel the ground shake—if anything goes wrong—you run for the tunnels._

She built her life around this metaphor. Go out, act boldly, but always have a safe house to retreat to. And of course, Twi’lek hospitality is famed. Take your friends with you. Zeb complains that the ship is not that big, and she can’t bring home every stray street urchin she finds. Hera replies hotly that she can sure as hell try. As their team grows, she more often stays on the ship during assignments. It’s practical to have her as a ready-made extraction team, but the role appeals to her on a deeper level, as well. No matter where they go, she can find a way to get them and bring them back safely.

The actual tunnels survive the war, but are dredged and then bombed to pieces years later, when the freedom fighters attempt to stand against Palpatine. Hera is already off-planet by then, her home nothing more than a memory and an idea. But the idea is strong _. If anything goes wrong, you come right back here. You can always come here. You'll be safe._

No bed aboveground is as comfortable for lounging and reading. She gets out an old text of poetry and tries, anyway. _Things fall apart, the center cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world._ She stops so her tears don’t short out the pad.

She dreams of home every night for a year, a variant of the same dream: Coming over the hill, expecting destruction, seeing the blast doors miraculously whole, walking in through the tunnels—there are some changes, but it’s still here! Not gone. She wakes up despairing. She has nobody but herself during that year, and she can’t find a center.  

 

6)      Many of the Alliance’s field operatives remember her, vaguely but fondly, as Cham’s little wild girl.

When they meet her, they bring up her father, and she is delighted to make their acquaintance, but no, she doesn’t remember. She’s unsure what to say, because here she is, a pale version of her father, not leading an entire planet to freedom, but operating a tiny ship of her own, taking a nibble out of the Empire that they barely even notice, just enough to keep her own crew afloat.

Privately, they watch her in action and think that she does Cham one better—able to compromise, able to understand a point of view other than her own, unwilling to sacrifice a soldier for the strategic whole.

(An echo of a distress call: “Commander Tano. Years ago you served with my father in the Clone Wars.”)

 

7)      She was pregnant once. It lasted two weeks.

She told Kanan because they were parsecs from a medical facility, and she needed his ability with the force to confirm it. Also because he deserved to know. Also because she was terrified. “I don’t understand,” she’d shaken her head. “We’ve been careful. This stuff should be effective ninety-nine in a hundred times.”

Kanan quirked an eyebrow at her. “And how many times have we been together, now?”  

It was the very worst timing possible. The revelation of a greater rebellion meant that the Empire was tracking them across the universe, and the actual rebellion, still in its infancy, couldn’t yet provide them with support. The whole galaxy was one very tight wringer. She wasn’t even entirely comfortable with the risks they were asking Sabine and Ezra to take.

When she told Kanan, he’d gotten quiet for a long moment, then said, “I guess we’d better start discussing names,” as if it were a serious concern. Her whole body had unstrung with relief. She didn’t want him upset with her; she was already fighting a galactic government. But she didn’t share his optimism. Or rather, she was fairly certain that his attitude was a show designed to make her feel better. She went round and round, trying to find a way to make it work, but there was no way. “I think we’re going to have to pass this time, love,” she’d told him, very quietly. Then they had that awful discussion, and he _really didn't want that_ , but he couldn’t find a practical way out, either. So the decision was made. But she couldn’t bring herself to make plans, much less go to a medical facility. For the first time in her life, Hera was paralyzed, unsure of what to do.

And then she woke up covered in a frightening amount of blood. The cramps followed, then a profound sense of guilt and relief at the same time—thankful to have this decision taken from her, guilty because she had wanted this to happen.  

Kanan lost any semblance of calm, sure that she was going to bleed to death. It had taken some fast talking to convince him that she was all right. These things just happen sometimes, especially so early. There is always a decent chance of this. Yes, I’m really all right. Yes, it hurts, but it’s fine. And the inevitable: Don’t tell anyone about this, love. Please.  
  
Mostly, her heart hurt for him. He’d spent the first week as panicked as she was. But at some point—she’d seen it in his dopey grin—he’d started imagining a baby. And then—she didn’t have to be force sensitive to see it—he wanted her to carry his child. He never said a word about his disappointment, nothing but concern for her health. But she had lost all ability, over the years, to sit by and see Kanan in pain. So she drug it out of him late one night. Maybe some day, love. I wouldn’t mind that, either. But I can’t imagine when.

 A half-human baby. What would it look like? Her eyes would be blue and green and wide and clear, framed with black lashes. Maybe she would have hair instead of lekku, and nobody would expect her to dance for their pleasure. But then there is that other fear—what if the child is force sensitive? She can’t share that one with Kanan; she loves him too much. But she’s not stupid, and she knows the risks.

 

8)      “Only silly girls moon over boys. You do not have the luxury of that kind of time. And if you did, I hope you would spend it on study, or charity… better pursuits.”

Cham catches her passing notes when she is eight and chastises her roundly. She’d only wanted to try on the idea of liking a boy. Most of her friends have gossiped about their crushes for months, and she feels left out. She was a full year later than her friends in losing her first baby tooth, too, so it’s possible there’s something immature about her—maybe she needs to catch up.

Cham is not having it. He repeats this mantra many times over the years— _you don’t want to be like those girls_ —and she agrees with him wholeheartedly. Who would want to be so frivolous? As she gets older and learns more about the outside world, those words take on a darker subtext, though her father would be shocked if he knew what she thought about. _You don’t want to be like those girls, mostly naked, chained at the neck, and writhing for a Hutt._ Maybe that’s what grown-ups think is attractive. She doesn’t understand romance.

Years later, she does learn the importance of cameraderie. Sneaking off to race speeders in the pitch dark is fun. But sneaking into side rooms and exploring other things is fun, too. There’s not much difference for her. She won’t take anyone along for the ride if they can’t keep up, and she insists that they both drive. Otherwise, where’s the sense of adventure?

 

9)      She loves music with an undying passion.

Hera doesn’t play an instrument, and she has no formal training, but music has been a part of her life from before she can remember, and she loves virtually anything, from Ryloth’s folk songs ( _Gather us in, and hold us forever. Gather us in, and make us your own. Gather us in, all peoples together. Fire of love in our flesh and our bones_ ) to Corellia’s protest music ( _Come gather round people, wherever you roam. And admit that the waters around you have grown)_ to the complex harmonies of the Coruscant Philharmonic.

Ezra and Sabine complain loudly when it’s Hera’s night to pick the holovid, and she picks the same cheesy musical, again. Kanan and Zeb agree, though they’re wise enough not to argue. She shouts them down, moving through the hallways and belting out “Climb every mountain! Ford every stream! Follow every rainbow until you find your dream!” She’s pretty sure Chopper is on her side. At least, he chimes in with some almost in-tune accompaniment.

Music was how she first knew she could trust Zeb. They needed more muscle, yes. He could be relied upon to fight the Empire, yes. Still, she wasn’t comfortable. She really didn’t want anyone on her ship operating out of a desire to destroy. And she wasn’t sure if he cared about collateral damage at all, even if that collateral damage meant people. Then, his second or third night on the Ghost, she followed a sound so quiet she thought she’d imagined it. Persistent. One string, then another, then the first. An instrument tuning. She stood undetected outside his door and listened to him for the better part of an hour. Lasat opera, words she didn’t understand, in a rich baritone. All right, she’d thought. Obviously, I am wrong. This person will be my good friend.

Growing up, she’d learned math and science because they would help her fly a ship. History and politics out of duty, because you can’t save a galaxy that you don’t understand. Literature, because books were few enough in her home to make her want more. And philosophy, because her father insisted. But everything she learned about people and pain and keeping an open heart, she learned from songs. And she still went to music when she needed to figure out how to solve problems.  

When Sabine came onboard, dangerous as a lylek and full of hate from some fresh wound, but so smart and so talented. Poised to create beautiful things, if you could alter her course just a little bit. But you couldn’t talk to her then. She’d cut you if you got close. Hera had pulled out an album that Kanan groaned was _too sappy_ , kicked him out of the cockpit, and played one song over and over, because it reminded her of Sabine _: the Robin Hood vandal…_ She went out shopping and came back with lots of paint and several assignments that for some reason required graffiti. Sabine let her know in no uncertain terms that she had _bought the wrong kind_ and she should _just leave it to someone who knows paint next time_ , but she also launched herself into those missions with a wicked joy, so Hera considered it a win. 

The first time she saw Ezra. The boy was cynical, incredibly resourceful, and lost, and she had a seemingly unconnected earworm when they met: _They gave me sticks and rocks and stars, and all that I could hold._ So she made Kanan pile things on him: Food, first. Then spare blaster parts, great books, work. _No time for brooding, Ezra. We need you for this operation. No, we can’t do it without you. Get up and get moving._ Then more food, of course, because she _was_ Twi'lek. 

And when she left Kanan, she _left_ him there, and she couldn’t go back because she’d left to protect Ezra in the first place, she’d curled on the bunk, wrapped around a pillow that couldn’t fill up the hollow spot, and she’d listened with all her might _. In prison cell and dungeon vile, our thoughts to them are winging. When friends by shame are undefiled, how can I keep from singing?_ But it didn’t work then, because later in the same album: _All my life, a child with promises. All I have are miles full of promises of home_.

 

10)   She never gets married.

But she does enjoy her family. Sabine, she admires so much. That girl is deadly and whip smart. She speaks multiple languages. She can tell you about art that is 10,000 years old, or art so new it’s illegal. She’s stronger and faster than Hera, too. And as she gets older, the reckless antics quietly disappear, replaced by well researched, intelligent plans to effect change. (The smart alek mouth remains.) Ezra, she wants to shield from everything, even the things that have already happened. In him, she sees a young Kanan, and she wants to mother him until he swats her away. But of course he would hate that, so she swallows those urges, even the urge to tell him how proud she is.  She relies on Chopper, perhaps the most consistent member of the crew, having forgotten that his personality quirks are anything out of the ordinary.  And Zeb is the friend who won’t be shocked, no matter what she tells him. And Kanan. Kanan is her sine qua non.

But marriage, in the official sense of a wedding ceremony, never happens. For one thing, secrecy is as reflexive to her as breathing, and marriage is such a public admission. She’s not ashamed to admit her feelings, force knows, but weddings seem like such a circus, and she doesn’t like to be on display. Kanan’s not comfortable with marriage, either—it feels too much like painting a target on Hera’s back. Or maybe he has a superstitious desire not to change something that is finally so good. So, no unnecessary ceremony to confirm what they already know. Just, quietly, eventually, a baby girl.


End file.
